2009: The Da Vinci Year

Update (30 December 2009): On December 25, 2009, it was announced that a team of Italian scientists were planning to exhume the remains of Leonardo da Vinci from his grave in Amboise in France. They want to establish if the remains are, indeed, Leonardo’s, and if he was indeed a vegetarian. And if his scull has survived and in a decent condition, there is a possibility that the master’s face will be restored.

Original (23 December 2009)

The end of the first decade of the new millennium was rightfully marked by several events and discoveries associated with the name of one of the genuine men of the past millennium: Leonardo da Vinci.

First, Nicola Barbatelli has discovered a portrait of Leonardo; it may also be by Leonardo, although this is contested, but it is certainly not that of Galileo.

(on the aside, Galileo’s fingers were discovered, so perhaps we may call 2009 the year of Italian discoveries).

Then, Piero Angelo armed himself with the help of the police forensic experts, art historians, and graphic artists to conclude with a degree of certainty that the faint image he found in the Codex on the Flight of Birds may be a self-portrait of Leonardo.

Before and during Barbatelli’s discovery, 10 drawings by Leonardo da Vinci from the Royal Collection were visiting Manchester Art Gallery. Da Vinci – The Genius is currently attracting visitors to the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester.

And in October 2009, Martin Kemp, the Professor Emeritus in History of Art at the University of Oxford, has claimed that a portrait of a beautiful Italian girl, previously thought to be painted in the 19th c., in fact belongs to Leonardo’s hand. The Master’s fingerprint was revealed thanks to the revolutionary “multispectral” camera, and, by eliminating one historic figure after another, Professor Kemp was able to establish that the sitter is Bianca Sforza, the daughter of Ludovico Sforza, the Duke of Milan, and his mistress Bernardina de Corradis.

Leonardo da Vinci, La Bella Principessa

Kemp believes the portrait must date from around 1496 when, aged 13 or 14, Bianca married the Duke’s army captain, Galeazzo Sanseverino (a patron of Leonardo’s). Tragically, she died four months after the wedding.

This would be Leonardo’s first known Sforza ‘princess’ portrait, although he painted two of the Duke’s mistresses: Cecilia Gallerani (Lady with an Ermine in the Czartoryski Museum, Cracov); and Lucrezia Crivelli (La Belle Ferronière in the Louvre).

The painting’s price rocketed from £19,000 to £100mln, and La Bella Principessa is hopefully displayed in March 2010 at a show called And There Was Light: The Masters of the Renaissance Seen in a New Light in the Eriksbergshallen, Gothenburg. The show’s artistic director is Alessandro Vezzosi, the Director of Museo Ideale in Vinci, Leonardo’s home town.

2009 is yet to end, and there may be another Leonardo discovery waiting. But even so, this has been a gigantic flood of exhibitions and new evidence shedding light on one of the most prodigious and enigmatic figures of the past.

Image credit: Antiques Trade Gazette.